The weather system has stalled over Ontario which, for us, means that the winds have actually reversed; Instead of coming in from the west and slowly cycling to the north, it’s swooping in from the east and swinging to the south. The entire system is covering the south end of three provinces (well, four, really, but it’s just barely touching one) and at least three states with snow, switching to rain to the east.
We’re just on the norther edge of the system, and seem to be getting more gaps between snowfalls, but there is still heavier snow expected.
The winds have increased, but we’re still at a very mild -4C/25F with a wind chill of -14C/7F.
I saw Junk Pile watching me through the window when I came out, but had to take a photo when I saw through the other window, that Nutmeg and Creamsicle Jr. were snuggled up under the heater bulb, I just had to take a picture! By the time I got my phone out, though, Nutmeg was at the window, checking me out. :-D
Smart kitties know where the warmth is!
I saw Butterscotch, too. I don’t know where her hiding spot it, but it’s not usually in the inner yard.
While switching out the trail cam memory cards, I remembered to get this picture.
We had started out with rain, but these icicles formed on the bumpers only on one side of the gate. There’s even icicles inside the gate post, at the ends of the hinge bolts!
The temperatures are expected to stay pretty constant, dipping only a degree or two overnight. By the end of today, they’re saying we may have a total of 20-35cm of snow. (8-14 inches) We have about 8 inches now.
The sun room, meanwhile, is staying steady at around 10C/14F. The onion seedlings, with their heater bulb below, are doing just fine in there. Of the various seeds that needed to be started this early, they’re easily the hardiest.
As I write this, the snow has stopped, but from the looks of the weather radar, we’ve got a patches of heavy snow about to hit us. Mind you, according to the radar, we should be snowing right now, so… we’ll see what happened.
Either way, I’m glad we don’t have to go anywhere, we’re warm inside, well stocked, and hunkered down. This is a good time for me to catch up on some crochet! :-)
We’re still getting a mild snowfall, off and on. My younger daughter and I made a quick trip to the post office, and the roads were pretty slushy. My husband had prescriptions refills ordered on Friday that were to be delivered today, so when we got the call that they were on the way, I made sure to unlock the gate and shovel the sidewalk. It’s a very damp, heavy snow we’re getting right now, because it’s just a few degrees below freezing.
The delivery driver had just come by and I’d quickly run out to lock the gate – sans coat, because it was that warm out there – was back inside, boots half off, when the phone rang. No one was near a phone to answer it, so it went to machine. I rushed over to pick up for whomever it was, only to discover it was a robot call.
From Environment Canada, with a snowfall warning!
So I stayed and listened to it. Since moving out here, we have never had a call from Environment Canada with a weather warning!
The expected snowfalls are now expected to be 15-20cm (6-8 inches) in most places, but some might get as much as 30cm! (12 inches) There were plenty of warnings about road conditions, visibility, and a number to call for those people who would not be able to make their retrovaccine appointments. It even included an email and twitter hashtag to report severe weather conditions. It was the exact same thing that is under my phone’s weather app alert.
We’ve had some pretty wicked storms since moving out here, and it really makes me wonder what triggered them to have the automated calls to start going out! I think this part of the alert is why. “There is still some uncertainty with the exact amounts as several waves of accumulating snow are expected through the end of Tuesday.” So… they really don’t know what this weather system is going to do – they hardly even refer to it as a “storm”. The winds are not particularly severe, and the temperatures aren’t going to be dropping much, even overnight.
Well, my husband has his medications – even his bubble packs, which he didn’t think he’d be able to get for a couple more days, the larder is full, and any of the places we need to go can wait.
Including the pharmacy. They forgot his insulin, but he’s got enough for a few more days. When he called them about the missing insulin, he made sure to add that, with the road conditions, we’re not expecting them to deliver it! It’ll be ready for pick up on Thursday. By then, the roads should be cleared, and the snow starting to melt away.
I’m still just surprised by the call! And appreciative. They would only be calling land lines, which means my mother would have gotten the call, too. Not everyone has cell phones or internet!
The warming pad has been added to his favourite spot under the heater bulb, so the Ginger baby can be warm from above and below!
When I finished putting getting food for the outside critters, he had come out, so I picked him up and sat on the swing bench with him.
He stayed like this almost the entire time, as we waited for my daughter to come in with his morning medication. He didn’t even purr, but just sat silently, only making a noise when he saw one of the outside cats go by.
He was so calm and settled that when my daughter came in with his pill, he barely even moved as she gave it to him! Then he let her cat him and cuddle him, while I went back out to finish my rounds.
His wounds are looking good overall, but there was one spot of rawness between two stitches we’ll have to keep an eye on.
Once my rounds were done, I quickly headed out to get more cat food and litter. While I was gone, the vet called to arrange removing the sutures. He’s now booked for Monday afternoon. I’m surprised they’re open on Easter Monday! I imagine they’re still doing a lot of catch up with having to refuse/delay so many treatments with the restrictions.
We’re keeping an eye on the forecasts, and it’s looking like the expected snow is going to hit us tonight, instead of tomorrow night. We’re supposed to reach 13C/55F this afternoon, then drop to -10C/14F overnight. The southern parts of the province are expected to be hit harder than we are, but we will still be getting rain, then snow, along with high winds, with blowing snow through most of tomorrow.
The gusts of high winds are already hitting us now, and some areas are under high wind alerts. We’re 8C/46F as I write this, with the wind chill supposedly putting us at 5C/41F, but it felt a lot colder while I was out in it!
Ginger, however is snug as a bug in his “isolation ward”. After his sutures are out, we should be able to introduce him to the rest of the house, and his expanded feline family!
I’m glad I was able to head out today to stock up on cat supplies. We won’t do our full city shopping trip until after Easter. Until then, we’re all settling in for what should be the gasp of winter. :-)
When I headed out to do my rounds this morning, it was already 26C/78F. When I grabbed the hose to use it briefly, before topping up the cats’ water bowls, the water was almost hot! So I decided to water a bunch of things, using up the warmer water so as not to shock the plants, until I could fill the cats’ bowls with cold water.
Since I have not found what I need to fix the front tap, we have all our hoses linked together at the back tap. That’s almost 300 feet of hose.
I got quite a bit of watering done before it started coming out cold! The nice thing about being on well, though, is that it does get cold. Ice cold, even. When we were on city water, on days like this, the best we could get was maybekindasorta cool.
I’m going to have to get in the habit of carrying a basket or something with me, when I do my rounds.
This are thinnings from the three different carrot beds. I would have picked more but 1) it was getting hard to hold them all in one hand – especially the ones where the greens broke off, 2) the mosquitoes were eating me alive and 3) I had a Creamsicle deciding to jump up on my back.
And roll around.
And repeatedly start to fall off before I finally got him off (with only minor scratches! LOL).
So he then decided to start rolling right over the carrots!!
*sigh*
We have lots of little sunburst squash showing up, but just the one bigger one. I didn’t want it to get too tough and seedy, so I picked it now. Later, I will choose one that I will leave to go to seed, for next year. We will probably still buy seeds, but I’d like to at least try saving seed as well.
This afternoon, I made a quick run into town. By the time I got home, we had reached our high of the day, which we are still now, now. At 32C/89F and a humidex putting us at 38C/100F, I was very glad to see my daughter meet me at the garage to help me hall the water jug refills back to the house! Yes, I did have the wagon, but getting anything through the door with kittens about is much easier with 2 people!
The sun room is definitely NOT a place to hang out right now.
If we were still keeping the doors open for the cats, I would have had the ceiling fan on to help at least a little. Right now, I just have the replacement door open – it has a screen window that actually opens and closes, unlike the one we replaced. :-D My mother used to have lacy curtains on all the windows because of how hot it would get in here. I can understand why, but it sort of defeats the purpose of having a sun room.
Who knows. We might use this at least part of this room as a greenhouse, some day.
The girls must be just dying upstairs. I wouldn’t be surprised if my daughter has to stop working because her computer and drawing tablet are overheating again!
We’re supposed to “cool down” after today, but the only means we’re supposed to remain below 30C, over the next two weeks.
One of the things I did while doing my evening rounds was bring the rain barrel we’d found behind the storage out, closer to the garden. My thought was to fill it with water, so that I can use ambient temperature water in the garden, rather than the hose. Unfortunately, since I’d last rolled it aside, it has developed cracks where it had been lying on the ground. I’m thinking I can patch them with some silicone sealant and still use it. I think I even have some, already. Before I do that, though, I have to figure out what I can use as a cover for it. I wouldn’t want some critter to fall in.
At some point, we will dig up the hose to the tap by the garden and replace it. The set up for the tap itself is getting very wobbly, so I want to redo that, as well. Thinking of how we do want to keep at least part of the area back there as a vegetable garden, I not only want to have a tap I can hook a hose onto, but I’d like to set up a surface area of some kind, so we can wash the veggies right away, or even just wash our own hands. Maybe with a small bench to sit on while scrubbing, for old and decrepit people like myself. ;-)
We can’t even start on that until we get the branch piles cleared away, first. The line runs almost under one of them – and that’s where water was spraying through the ground when I tested the tap. :-D
I’m really looking forward to when those are gone!
The plan was to hire the company that cleared trees from the roof and power lines to bring in their massive chipper this year, but after having to replace so many expensive items just this month, it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to do it after all. Ultimately, though, we should invest in our own chipper.
I guess it’s a good thing our washing machine didn’t come in. It means we are NOT driving to the city today. Right now, I’m glad to not have to make the trip. For some reason, I had a sleepless night, and am running on empty. I did finally get a few hours of sleep, but not until after 6am!
Thank God my “job” is to take care of this place, where we can be flexible in how and when we take care of things, depending on schedules, health issues and the weather.
Speaking of weather, today is going to be a good day to have no energy and stay inside.
We’re looking at a high of 32C/90F this afternoon, with the humidex bringing it to 42C/107F.
The storms I’d been tracking on the weather radar over the past couple of days not only passed us by, but even the rain we were expecting didn’t materialize. With 88% humidity, it was decidedly muggy when I did my rounds this morning! It does look like we got some sort of drizzle this morning, at least.
Unfortunately, it also meant I didn’t have the energy to clean up the mess the skunk made this morning. After cleaning up in the old kitchen and sun room, we had two large garbage bags set aside on the patio blocks by the main entry, waiting for our next dump run. For some reason, the skunk tore one of them apart. We found him in there this morning, still burrowing. These bags have no food garbage in them. What was the skunk after in there?
We really need to build a box to hold our garbage bags until we can get to the dump.
Then, when I went to check on the squash beds, I discovered a little gourd plant dug up. It was one of the ones that finally came up in the seed tray, long after the others had been transplanted, so I wasn’t expecting anything from it. Yet, it also seems to have been the only surviving gourd plant. Birdhouse gourds are a climbing vine, and it had enough tendrils that I gave it its own bamboo pole to climb and was starting to train it upwards. I doubt it will survive, but I put it back. Whatever the skunk was digging for was under the vine, and once it was aside the skunk left it be. The plant itself is undamaged, but the damage to the roots might be too much.
There had never been a lot of gourd seeds that germinated, but I know there had been several among the transplants. I was pretty sure I’d been able to put mostly gourds along the back row in the squash bed, but none of what’s growing there have tendrils. Now that I know which ones are the sunburst squash, that means all the others are from the Summer Surprise mix of different zucchini.
I’m kinda disappointed. I had really hoped to have some birdhouse gourds for future crafting! They require a year to dry out before they can be used, so this was already a long term plan.
Ah, well. I’ve since found a website that specializes in different types of gourds. The next time I try to grow them, I will order some different varieties from there. There is bound to be something that will grow in our region, and hopefully, we will be better able to protect them from the elements – and digging skunks! – too.
With Junk Pile’s babies starting to use the spirea to hide in, I moved a food dish near the area. This morning, while Junk Pile was by the house, waiting for me to refill the kibble, I saw her mostly white kitten, sitting on the mulch by the grapes.
It’s not the white kitten in the photo above!
Can you see the little white nose peaking out from under the grapes?
The grey baby eventually came out to eat with mom, but I didn’t see the white one again.
While checking on the garden beds and doing a bit of weeding, I pulled a few baby carrots.
Breakfast of champions! :-D
I’ve got the three varieties in here; purple, white and rainbow mix.
They were very tasty! :-D
Today, we’re going to have to really push to finish the old kitchen and sun room. The weather forecast has changed.
The heat warnings are back, with a predicted high of 30C/86F, and the humidex making it feel like 36C/96F. The thunderstorms that had been predicted for tomorrow are now expected this afternoon. Even if the storms miss us again, we’ll likely catch some rain, and among the stuff we have sitting outside are power tools.
The Re-Farmer 